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Do you support the 'right' of individuals to perform female genital mutiliation on their children for religious reasons? Do you support the 'right' of people sacrificing virgins in the name of their religion? It's called reasonable limitation. Who is trying to take away someone's legal right to perform baptism? Are you creating an absurd strawman cause you feel your irrational belief system is under attack?

So some unequal treatment justifies more unequal treatment? What argument? All I see is an unjustified opinion that you don't think freedom of religion should apply to religions that you do not approve of and that are not mainstream.

Like for instance, if someone has a religion where they have a religious requirement to blood sacrifice virgins to their volcano god, should that practice be allowed in Canada? Freedom of thought should be allowed in Canada. However, freedom to practice one's religion should only be allowed within reasonable limmits (virgin-sacrifice is outside reasonable limits). Creating a hypothetical isn't a strawman. Do you even know what a strawman argument is? All religions are new at one point. Islam used to be 1 day old, same with Christianity, Sikhism, Buddism, Hinduism, etc. What you are advocating is not freedom of religion, but freedom of religion for only well established religions that you approve of. Who is supposed to define what is and isn't a religion, the government? How do you know that won't lead to the government becoming like Indonesia and not recognizing Judaism or Sikhism? The point is to make people ask questions and to fight for the right to wear a colander on your head.

How does allowing people to wear a colander on their head restrict the rights of another person to beleive in or practice their religion?

No he isn't. Where has the guy claimed to want to limit people's rights to wear a turban or hikab? Satire does not imply wanting to remove people's rights to wear religious clothing. Exactly! Everyone should be allowed to wear a hat. That is the fairest and most reasonable solution.

I think that people that do not murder other people are better than people that do murder other people. Is that bigotry? Am I bigoted against murderous thugs? Correlation does not imply causation. Just because you may find a stronger correlation between race and crime than between religion and crime, doesn't mean that more crime is due to race than due to religion. Race isn't a belief system + ideology that influences behaviour, religion is. People don't choose their race, people choose their religion. I don't attribute such a simply explanation to the lack of performance of Haiti. Furthermore, trying to claim that Muslim countries are formally colonized countries is an untrue generalization and overlooks most of the past 1400 years. Islam was primarily a colonizer, not one to be colonized for most of its history. You are seriously equating religious violence with pornography? With killing of apostates or homosexuals with a consenting adult selling pictures of themselves to another consenting adult? Blah, Blah. Same cultural relativist BS. A culture that has freedom of expression is superior to a culture that kills apostates and bans blasphemy. A culture that does not criminalize actions between two consenting adults that do not harm anyone is superior to a culture that kills homosexuals. A liberal democracy is FAR superior to a country that follows sharia law.

1. The main goal is to get your driver's license photo taken with a colander on your head. Why? Well the primary reason is its fun. It's like halloween, people like to dress up and at the end of it you have a silly story to tell. Lighten up. 2. It points out hypocrisy and the fact that the law does not apply equally to everyone. The law should be consistent and apply equally to everyone regardless of their religious affiliation. So either everyone should be allowed a head covering, or no one should. As it currently is, you can only wear a head covering if your reasons are religious, which is discrimination and gives religious people more rights than non-religious people. If a Sikh is allowed to wear a turban then an atheist should be allowed to wear a turban as well. Most pastafarians don't want to ban religious headgear, but rather merely wish to have the right to wear colanders. 3. It points out the fact that it is difficult/impossible for the government to define religion. And furthermore, it is dangerous if the government tries to define religion and make a list of accepted religions. If the government determines what is and isn't a religion then your society no longer has freedom of religion and you can look at numerous cases across the world (such as Indonesia where Judaism and Sikhism aren't religions). It also points out that many people that claim to support freedom of religion only support it if it is a mainstream religion; so they are hypocrits. 3. It pisses of religious people, which almost always gives amusing reactions.

How are pastafarians trying to get Turbans banned or impose their beliefs on others? They are fighting for the right to wear a colander on the head, not to get turbans banned.

I wrote "That is the best measure of how 'progressive' a country is? The number of female heads of state a country has had?". Do you not see the question marks? How am I claiming that you have a position that you do not have? You claimed that there is more variation within Islam than between Islam. I asked you to justify that claim. How are you even measuring variation? And why do you think that beliefs and rituals do not matter when determining the variation between religions?

The premises in your question is poorly defined. The Sahara being 'green' or not is not a binary thing; there is no point at which you can objectively say the Sahara has 'greened up'. Also, the length of time of a business cycle isn't a well defined nor consistent concept. Your questions frequently have these poorly defined concepts and are ambiguous. And the 'bleedingly obvious' reason you keep asking about a time-frame that includes the business cycle is because you purposely want to ask poorly defined questions that cannot be answered. That's why you prefer to use a non-well defined time period as opposed to a well-defined time period. I'm aware of the absurd tactic you are trying to use: 1. Demand an answer to an absurd question with poorly defined concepts and false premises. 2. Receive no answer due to ridiculousness of original question. 3. Claim that the opponent's position is wrong because they cannot answer your 'simple' question. 4. Repeat tactic ad nauseam.

That's a weird and inconsistent way of defining what is and isn't a religion. According to Indonesia, Judaism and Sikhism are not religions.

Bobby Hendersen founded the religion and created most of it, but he didn't create all aspects of the religion. For example, he didn't create the practice of wearing colanders on the head when getting your driver's license taken. What is wrong with wanting the law to apply equal to everyone. If Sikhs are allowed to wear turbans when having a driver's license photo taken, Jewish people are allowed to wear Yamakas when having a driver's license photo taken, and Muslims are allowed to wear Hijabs when having a driver's license taken, why can't a person that declares that they follow Pastafarianism, not be allowed to wear a colander? So to you, atheists shouldn't be vocal and shouldn't point out the absurd privilege that religion has in various societies across the globe? Does it upset you went atheists point out the BS in the beliefs of other people? It addresses a very serious problem: lack of applying the law equally to everyone.

That is the best measure of how 'progressive' a country is? The number of female heads of state a country has had? Let's see, Indonesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Indonesia 1. You are only allowed religious freedom if your religion is one of the 6 officially recognized religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. If you are a Sikh or are Jewish, you don't have freedom of religion. 2. The government doesn't not allow for not believing in God. Government employees must swear allegiance to the Pancasilia ideology, which requires the belief in a single god. So if you are an atheist or a pagan, you cannot work for the government. 3. The province of Aceh implements Sharia law. 4. The country has laws against blasphemy. As for Turkey, Turkey hasn't had a female prime minister in nearly 20 years, and you are horribly uninformed if you don't understand the significant change to Islamic conservatism in the past decade. The AKP has held power for nearly a decade and Erdogan is very sympathetic to the cause of Islamists groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. Let alone all the restrictions on freedom of speech that has been imposed the last few years to silence the opposition to Erdogan and those that insult Islam. The internet is highly regulated, and social networking sites as well as video sharing sites like twitter and youtube are often blocked. But yes, in comparison to Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Turkey are liberal utopias! Lol, what? I don't even know where to start with this except maybe ask you to justify this absurd claim. All types of Islam have many things in common that they do not have in common with other religions such as: Belief that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is the last and final messenger of Allah, belief that the Quran contains the direct commands of God through the prophet Mohammed that were revealed to him by the angel Gabriel, belief that God directly created Adam and Eve from dirt/mud and that these were the first people, belief that those who do not believe in Allah will go to hell, while righteous Muslims will go to jannah/heaven, belief that humans should pray 5 times a day towards Mecca, belief that Muslims should try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca to see the Kabba at least once in their life, belief that Muslims should fast between sunrise and sunset during the Lunar Month of Ramadan and belief that Muslims should annually pay the Zakat (a 2.5% tax on wealth above the nisab/poverty level that should help the cause of Islam; it can be used in a charitable way to help poorer Muslims, or it can also be used to fund warriors that are fighting for Islam).

Of course the guy isn't devoted. Pastafarianism is a fake religion created by atheists to poke fun at religion and point out hypocrisy in the implementation of our laws regarding religious accommodation. But it isn't the state's job to determine what is and isn't a religion. What is funny is reading the comments at ctv and other websites and the shear number of people that actually think the Pastafarian is genuine in his beliefs. We should care because we should have freedom of religion and freedom of thought in this country, and it should not be the state's role to determine what is and what isn't a religion. Maybe I consider the zombie-worshiping and flesh-eating rituals of Catholicism insulting to human intelligence but you don't see me advocating that Catholics shouldn't be allowed to perform their bizarre rituals. The state should not define what is and isn't a religion period because not only is it difficult to define religion, but it gives the state absurd power in oppressing the rights of those that follow minority religions.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/b-c-pastafarian-loses-driver-s-licence-over-holy-colander-hat-1.2041844 A man in surrey has had his driver's license stripped from him because he is required by his faith to wear religious head gear when taking a driver's license photo. This is complete discrimination. Apparently it is okay to wear a turban, hijab or yamaka, but a pastafarian can't wear religious headgear as well? Are only 'mainstream' religious entitled to freedom of religion. This is a huge outrage! I wish this pastafarian the best of luck and greatest noodley blessings in his endevours to increase religious freedom in this country. It is interesting to notice that Texas and Oklahoma have more religious freedom than BC. Do other posters agree with me, or do you agree with the ICBC?

Again strawman, and taking what I say out of context. Do you not understand what a conditional statement is? Saying if A then we should do B, does not mean we should do B. The context of me saying we should subsidize CO2 emissions was conditional on only looking at the CO2 fertilization effect. But it doesn't make sense to only look at the CO2 fertilization effect, thus I don't advocate for subsidizing of CO2 until 1200 ppm. Your continued rejection of Occum's Razor is well established. Tell me, what brand of religious BS do you subscribe to?

Yes. And do you not understand that there is a big difference between the change in CO2 levels we are talking about in the context of human emissions and the amount that CO2 levels would need to rise before creating these problems you refer to. Have you ever been indoors? CO2 levels between 1000-2000 ppm in doors are not uncommon. Atmospheric CO2 could increase to 1500 ppm without direct negative impacts on human health (I'm referring to the partial derivative not full derivative here, in case anyone tries to misread what I wrote). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia At what atmospheric CO2 concentrations does the CO2 fertilization effect start to plateau for plants? Around 1200-1500 ppm. Maybe this is related to the fact that the vast majority of the past 600 million years has seen much higher atmospheric CO2 levels than 1000 ppm and the fact that CO2 is an ingredient in photosynthesis. By comparison, current CO2 levels are not even 400 ppm, and in a non-mitigation scenario are unlikely to exceed 800 ppm by the end of this century. Keep things in perspective. If you want to discuss real issues related to increasing atmospheric CO2 fine, but don't make up BS about running out of oxygen or dying of CO2 poisoning.

I already explained this. The benefits of CO2 fertilization are immediate. If you don't believe me,you can go to a greenhouse and ask people why they increase the CO2 content of the air inside the greenhouse.

If people make an unjustified claim, I ask them to back it up. Though it is pretty typical of the alarmist mentality to think that you don't need to justify any of your claims. Yes you did. You wrote "But hey, you don't get sumpin' for nutin'.". Why only in the 'short run'? You don't think that there will be any long run benefits? Climate change isn't a zero-sum game. There will be benefits and costs, but that doesn't mean benefits do not exceed costs. All latitudes would benefit greatly from the CO2 fertilization effect for example, plus most of the warming will occur at polar latitudes as opposed to equatorial latitudes. As expected, climate alarmists think they should be exempt from needing to justify their claims.

I don't drink. And how does whether I drink or not exempt you from the burden of proof and justifying your claim. Justify your claim that you don't get something from nothing.

Because 1. not every Muslim majority country follows Sharia and 2. not all forms of Islam advocate for the stoning of adulterers. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't a strong theological justification for stoning adulterers in Islam and that doesn't mean that the stoning of adulterers in various muslim majority countries has 'nothing to do with Islam'. We do. It's called honour killings. Look it up. There are numerous reasons why various Muslims may claim that death for homosexuality is not Sharia and not Islam: 1. Taqiyya, 2. Many Muslims do not understand their own religion, 3. There are different versions of Islam. Ad hominem. What Islam does and does not advocate can derived independently by looking at the Islamic texts such as the Quran. Why not read the Quran for yourself rather than continue your dogmatic position that Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam.

And you ignore the fact that there are very very strong theological justifications for the actions of various non-liberal positions in Islam. Things like death for apostasy, death for adultery, death for blasphemy, etc. Yes muslim-majority countries are very diverse and should not be generalized under the term 'muslim countries'. And yes, people should recognize the diversity of different forms of Islam. However, that doesn't somehow justify ignoring the role of Islam in extremism and lack of freedom around the world. And it certainly doesn't justify claims like 'Islamic extremism has nothing to do with Islam' or 'ISIS are not even muslim' that idiot cultural-relativists like David Cameron and Barrack Obama keep claiming.

Again with this continued strawman argument. You fail to understand the difference between a partial and full derivative so confuse claims about the CO2 fertilization effect with claims about the overall effect of CO2. Let me know when you obtain even a basis knowledge of simple calculus. While you are at it, please also learn some basics about the theory of evolution. Maybe you will eventually accept the scientific fact that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor. Though you can continue to reject science and believe in magic fairy tales while claiming that 'science' backs your avocation for severe CO2 mitigation policies if you want. It only makes you look more absurd.

Please provide the justification for this claim. This sounds a lot like the pseudoscience notion of charma or the 'we have sinned against Gaia so will be punished' nonsense. I.e. it seems the basis for your claims is an ideology resembling religion.

1. Average ground elevation in Maldives is 1.5 m. Even without mitigation policies, most of the country will still be above sea level 100 years in the future. Put the rate of change and the timescale of which people are able to adapt into perspective. 2. Maldives is 298 square kilometers in area, Canada is nearly 10 million square kilometers in area. Canada is over 33505 times the size of Maldives. Have you ever thought that a loss of some of Maldives is more than offset by gains in the usefulness of Canadian land? Put things in perspective. If you want to show the net effect is negative then fine, perform a well executed cost-benefit analysis. Don't just look at the negatives of CO2 emissions and ignore the positives. 3. If losing land due to sea levels increasing by like 0.5 m per century is so bad, then why not advocate that we start a new ice age? Think of all the extra land we would obtain! Alaska would be connected to Russia, Britain would be connected to Europe, sea levels everywhere would be significantly lower, and practically all of Canada, Russia, Patagonia and Northern Europe would be under ice... 4. It took until the last glacial period to end for human civilization to take off. It didn't before then because agriculture was unviable in most parts of the world. Why you continue to think that a tropical species like humans that like temperatures of 23 C would be worse off in a climate that is better for agriculture and with temperatures more suited to human life is bizarre. 5. Maldives is an evil theocracy. The world would be a better place if it did not exist to be honest. Not sure if harming Liberal Democracies to save Theocracies is a compelling argument. Also, you keep avoiding the main questions. If warming is bad, is cooling good? What do you think the optimal average temperature of the Earth is? 14 C? 15 C? 13 C? 16 C?